Sometimes the most interesting conversations in blogs are the off-topic comments in a post. That happened a couple of weeks ago in Art’s blog (12 Witnesses) A commenter asked,
“If you were a church’s leading candidate for its vacant senior pastor position, how much leadership would you hope that the associate ministry staff would have exercised to help the congregation prepare for your arrival?”
The Center for Congregational Health recently completed a research project designed to help them judge the effectiveness of their Intentional Interim Ministry training. On-site interviews, telephone conferences, and paper surveys were used with both members of the church’s transition team and the new pastor.
One statement the new pastors were asked to respond to was, “I understood and felt involved in/included in this congregation’s shared vision of the future.”
The report states,
“Several (pastors) found this to be a refreshing experience because they knew where the church wanted to go and whether or not their particular skill sets could enhance that vision.”
The associate staff may or may not be the best ones to lead the congregation through a transitional period of self-examination. The new pastors of churches that have used the interim time in a strategic manner clearly believed the experience was valuable.
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